The Scoop on TSA Pre✓™

Hello out there in the blogosphere, I am Jonella. I work with Bob at TSA and in particular I work on a lot of the TSA Pre✓™ communications. Since the launch of TSA Pre✓™ last October, more than 750,000 travelers have received expedited screening and we’ve received lots of positive feedback and a few reoccurring questions or themes that  I want to address and what better place than here on the TSA Blog! 

“Why is TSA Pre✓™ only open to a small, select group of passengers?” 

TSA Pre✓™, as with our other risk-based initiatives, is based on the premise that most passengers do not pose a risk to security. Acting on that premise, we looked for pre-existing traveler databases we could utilize to test our ability to identify low-risk passengers. U.S. airlines and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have populations of travelers who have already provided details about themselves and both were willing to partner with TSA to offer TSA Pre✓™ benefits to their populations as part of our initial test of the expedited screening concept. 

We are actively looking for ways to include more populations in some of the risk-based screening initiatives. For example, we recently added active duty U.S. service members to the TSA Pre✓™ population. We are starting their eligibility for those traveling out of Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport with plans of  expanding this particular initiative to other airports in the future through our partnership with the Department of Defense. 

Frequent flyers contacted by aircraft operators do not incur a fee to participate in TSA Pre✓™. Currently, American Airlines and Delta Air Lines are participating in TSA Pre✓™ and operating out of 12 airports and both continue to offer eligible passengers the opportunity to opt in. US Airways, United Airlines and Alaska Airlines, which will join TSA Pre✓™ in the coming months, are also contacting eligible passengers to invite them to opt in. JetBlue is expected to join later this year. So, if you are a frequent flyer with any one of these airlines, check your email and be sure to opt in so you can participate.

Another option for passengers is to join one of CBP’s Trusted Traveler programs. TSA’s partnership with CBP automatically qualifies U.S. citizens who are members of Global Entry, SENTRI, and NEXUS for participation in TSA Pre✓™ - at no additional cost. People who are not current members of those programs can apply anytime to get the dual benefit of Global Entry for international travel and TSA Pre✓™ for domestic travel. Global Entry charges $100, and membership is good for five years. The cost to join NEXUS is about half as much and also applies for five years.

“I opted into TSA Pre✓™ but I rarely, if ever, get expedited screening.”

Random and unpredictable security measures are a part of everything we do. This is to ensure that terrorists and anyone with bad intentions will have a hard time gaming the system. To that end, no one who opts in should expect to get expedited screening every time they fly through a TSA Pre✓™ airport. That said, some passengers say they have opted in but seldom receive expedited screening and there could be a few reasons for this.  

First, it is important to remember that TSA Pre✓™ is currently only available for U.S. citizens traveling domestically on a participating airline, out of a participating airport. Click here for the most updated list.

Secondly, if you are a member of a CBP Trusted Traveler program, be sure you’re including your PASS ID – found in the top-left corner on the back of your membership card – in the ‘Known Traveler’ field every time you book a flight. If you’re not sure it’s in there, especially if you’re not booking it yourself, you can always call your airline to confirm that your number is on the reservation before you fly. 

“I can’t remember if I opted in with my airline. How can I find out?”

The airlines capture your TSA Pre✓™ opt-in status and transmit that information to TSA along with your TSA Secure Flight passenger data. If you’re unsure whether you have already opted in, I would encourage you to check your airline member profile. Some airlines have the ability to add your TSA Pre✓™ opt-in status to your frequent flyer account information online. And remember, if you’re already a member of one of the CBP Trusted Traveler programs you can enter your PASS ID when booking your own travel or saving it in your frequent flyer profile – that signals your opt-in status and that info will be transmitted to TSA when the airline sends your other data.

We are excited about the initiative’s success and look forward to its continued expansion. Stay tuned on the blog and TSA.gov for future announcements for TSA Pre✓™. 

I'll be blogging more in the future. See you next time!

Jonella
TSA Blog Team

If you’d like to comment on an unrelated topic you can do so in our Off Topic Comments post. You can also view our blog post archives or search our blog to find a related topic to comment in. If you have a travel related issue or question that needs an immediate answer, you can contact a Customer Support Manager at the airport you traveled, or will be traveling through by using Talk to TSA.

TSA Taking Nail Clippers from Soldiers? - Nail Clipper Myth Buster

An inaccurate account alleging that TSA Officers took nail clippers from soldiers returning from Afghanistan is starting to spread around again. We blogged about this back in 2010 and FactCheck.org even busted the myth, but in the last week, I’ve had several people email me to ask me if it’s true, or to let me know that it’s spreading again.

The unattributed story claims TSA confiscated multi-tools and nail clippers, while all soldiers on board were allowed to carry military issued firearms. The bottom line is the story is not accurate and couldn't possibly be true. At Indianapolis International Airport, military charters arrive at the remote transit terminal, exclusive for these types of flights.  TSA staff does not have access to this facility and, we do not conduct any screening operations there. Also, nail clippers have never been prohibited by TSA. 

The facility in question is run by the Indiana National Guard, so in 2010, the Director of Public Affairs for the Indiana National Guard provided us with this quote:

“TSA does not have personnel or conduct any screening in the facility where military charters are processed at Indianapolis International Airport.”

Shawn D. Gardner
Director of Public Affairs
Indiana National Guard

Please feel free to forward this to anybody who may have been misled by the original story. 

Blogger Bob Burns

TSA Blog Team 

If you’d like to comment on an unrelated topic you can do so in our Off Topic Comments post. You can also view our blog post archives or search our blog to find a related topic to comment in. If you have a travel related issue or question that needs an immediate answer, you can contact a Customer Support Manager at the airport you traveled, or will be traveling through by using Talk to TSA. 

Myth Buster: TSA Not Setting Up Checkpoints On Tennessee Highways

Depending on what inaccurate blog post you may have read, you would think that TSA has checkpoints set up all across Tennessee’s highways.  That’s just simply not the case. In fact, it’s really startling to see how off base some of the claims have been.

As part of an ongoing terrorism prevention and response program, the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security hosted a statewide exercise on October 18-20, 2011.  TSA participated through its Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response program. The exercise focused on improving the communications and operating relationships of state, local, and federal agencies when responding to any type of homeland security situation.

TSA VIPR personnel participated at multiple locations in the Tennessee exercise, supporting state and local personnel as they inspected vehicles to identify potential security threats.

In addition, Transportation Security Officers were in attendance to provide information including a leaflet to truck drivers at weigh stations about TSA’s First Observer program that encourages drivers to report potentially suspicious activity or items they see on the road.

TSA officers did not physically screen drivers during this exercise as erroneously reported.  The actual vehicle inspections were conducted by the Tennessee State Highway Patrol just the same as they are done every day.

Blogger Bob

TSA Blog Team 

If you’d like to comment on an unrelated topic you can do so in our Off Topic Comments post. You can also view our blog post archives or search our blog to find a related topic to comment in. If you have a travel related issue or question that needs an immediate answer, you can contact a Customer Support Manager at the airport you traveled, or will be traveling through by using Talk to TSA.

 

No Scams Here, Just a Technical Foul

A sports columnist recently wrote that a Transportation Security Officer (TSO) was offering to take people to the front of the checkpoint line via a wheelchair for a fee. Of course, his story picked up a bit of attention on the ol’ intertubes.

I and others more familiar with airports and checkpoint security instantly knew this wasn’t a TSO, but to be sure, we reviewed the video. What we found was that the person he wrote about was a skycap. Skycaps are porters who assist passengers, some often in wheelchairs. They work for tips  and their uniforms do not resemble those of a TSO. In fact, many skycaps wear hats as TSOs do not.

It’s standard procedure for people using wheelchairs to be brought to the front of the line where the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) gates are located.

While I’ve seen and heard about our TSOs going out of their way to assist passengers outside of the checkpoint, their main focus is security. If you or somebody you are traveling with will need a wheelchair or some other type of assistance before or after the checkpoint, please ask your airport or airline about the availability of their skycap service. 

Blogger Bob

TSA Blog Team 

If you’d like to comment on an unrelated topic you can do so in our Off Topic Comments post. You can also view our blog post archives or search our blog to find a related topic to comment in. If you have a travel related issue or question that needs an immediate answer, you can contact a Customer Support Manager at the airport you traveled, or will be traveling through by using Talk to TSA.

TSA Cancer Cluster Myth Buster

This is old news, but it’s back in the news and since it’s such an important topic, we wanted to address it again to alleviate any concerns it might be causing.

Myth: There is a TSA employee cancer cluster at the Boston Logan International Airport (BOS) related to the backscatter body scanners.

Fact:  There is no relationship between any cancer diagnoses in Boston and the technology in the airport. (Based on a survey by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health). In fact, there were no body scanners at BOS when the complaints were filed.

I blogged about this back in May, but all of our X-ray technology (backscatter body scanners, and all baggage scanners) has been tested and retested and our scanners are operating safely. You can actually take a look at the reports and read about how we test the machines here. 

Common Questions: 

Q: Why aren’t your officers permitted to wear dosimeters? 

 

A: There is a really good reason for this. The emissions from our X-ray technology are well below the requirements that would require their routine usage. To  help reassure passengers and employees that the technology is safe, however, health physicists with the U.S. Army have been conducting area dosimeter surveys at multiple airports nationwide.

Q: Why doesn’t TSA allow third party testing for the backscatter technology?

A: We have. Independent third party testing and analyses of TSA backscatter technology have been conducted by the U.S. Army Public Health Command, the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL). They all came to the same conclusion by the way. It’s safe…

Blogger Bob

TSA Blog

If you’d like to comment on an unrelated topic you can do so in our Off Topic Comments post. You can also view our blog post archives or search our blog to find a related topic to comment in. If you have a travel related issue or question that needs an immediate answer, you can contact a Customer Support Manager at the airport you traveled, or will be traveling through by using Talk to TSA.

TSA Pat-downs At Santa Fe Prom? Nope.

While we enjoy power ballads and disco balls more than anybody, TSA has not conducted pat-downs at any proms. Some are getting the story right, but others are predictably getting it wrong and we wanted to clear things up.

Here's the scoop: A school in Santa Fe that uses contract security  (unrelated to TSA) is being sued over how it screened two female students. In a ruling stating that the Santa Fe School System needed to change its screening procedures, a judge initially ordered the school system to provide a “TSA certified” person to “supervise the searches.” While we appreciate the Judge’s confidence in TSA screening procedures, TSA’s transportation security mission does not allow us to provide pat-downs at the prom. The judge later allowed the School System to use state police officers instead. 

Blogger Bob

TSA Blog Team

If you’d like to comment on an unrelated topic you can do so in our Off Topic Comments post. You can also view our blog post archives or search our blog to find a related topic to comment in. If you have a travel related issue or question that needs an immediate answer, you can contact a Customer Support Manager at the airport you traveled, or will be traveling through by using Talk to TSA.

TSA Scanner Levels 10x Higher Than Expected?

I recently posted about mistakes made in radiation testing reports. Since then, I’ve seen a lot of chatter on the web about how our advanced imaging technology (AIT) backscatter machines were operating at higher levels. While there were errors in the reporting, please rest assured that our body scanners were still screening well below national standards.

For those of you who like to get into the weeds, the “10x higher” issue stems from a field on the survey form that was not divided by 10 as the survey specified. So, the amount was incorrectly reported as 10x higher than it was supposed to be, not 10x higher than the requirement. So, how did we know the number in the third example was inaccurate? That’s an easy one. The machines are incapable of operating at those levels. They’re designed that way… Like the protection a circuit breaker provides to a home, the AIT machines contain safety systems that prevent the production of radiation levels in excess of federally established limits.

You can read the post I mentioned above about how we’re going to retest all of the machinery and post the results on a special section of our web page.

Blogger Bob

TSA Blog Team

If you’d like to comment on an unrelated topic you can do so in our Off Topic Comments post. You can also view our blog post archives or search our blog to find a related topic to comment in. If you have a travel related issue or question that needs an immediate answer, you can contact a Customer Support Manager at the airport you traveled, or will be traveling through by using Talk to TSA.

TSA Testing DNA? No way!

***Update 3/4/2011*** Even though we posted on this Saturday shortly after the rumors started to spread, many have still been incorrectly reporting that TSA was going to collect DNA samples from passengers this summer. Media Matters took this story on, and as of this morning, FOX news issued an on-air apology for misreporting the story. ***

 TSA is not testing and has no plans to use any technology capable of testing DNA.


An article was posted to "The Daily" today with the misleading headline "Genetic Patdown." Even more misleading, the first sentence leads off with the mention of airport scanners. So obviously, even though the rest of the article says nothing about airports or TSA, some readers naturally assumed this was a new technology that would be heading to the airports and the tweets went wild. It didn't help that "tsa-scanner" was included in the URL.


The DHS Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) is doing preliminary testing with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) who already uses DNA testing in some cases to establish familial relationships in refugee processing.


DHS S&T expects to receive a prototype DNA analyzer device this summer to conduct a preliminary evaluation of whether this kind of technology could be considered for future use. At this time, there are no DHS customers, nor is there a timeline for deployment, for this kind of technology - this is a simply a preliminary test of how the technology performs.


Again, TSA is not testing and has no plans to use any technology capable of testing DNA.


Blogger Bob

TSA Blog Team

If you’d like to comment on an unrelated topic you can do so in our Off Topic Comments post. You can also view our blog post archives or search our blog to find a related topic to comment in. If you have a travel related issue or question that needs an immediate answer, you can contact a Customer Support Manager at the airport you traveled, or will be traveling through by using Talk to TSA.

TSA Transportation Security Officers Denied Service At Mystery Seattle Restaurant? Not likely…

A travel blogger wrote a post earlier this week claiming that TSA Transportation Security Officers (TSOs) were being denied service from a restaurant near the Seattle-Tacoma airport. No restaurant name was given. The story has since gone viral and has even popped up on national TV. Being appalled by the story, we naturally looked into it and none of our workforce in the Seattle region had heard of or seen this mystery restaurant. Yesterday, the Seattle Weekly’s “The Daily Weekly” Blog posted a piece titled: “Sea-Tac "Anti-TSA Cafe" Story Sounds Like a Hoax.” The post raised some great questions on the legitimacy of the rumor, so we decided to share it on Twitter last night and now with our blog audience. 

Blogger Bob 

TSA Blog Team

If you’d like to comment on an unrelated topic you can do so in our Off Topic Comments post. You can also view our blog post archives or search our blog to find a related topic to comment in. If you have a travel related issue or question that needs an immediate answer, you can contact a Customer Support Manager at the airport you traveled, or will be traveling through by using Talk to TSA.

Chalk Up a Smooth Holiday Travel Season to Hard Working Officers and Prepared Passengers

The holiday travel season of 2010 has come and gone and thanks to our hard working officers and prepared passengers, travelers were able to move through our checkpoints smoothly and uneventfully. Some are saying this is due to TSA turning off Advanced Imaging Technology machines (AIT). Just as I said after Opt Out day, this is not the case and there may be several reasons somebody might think this.

•  First off, everybody is not necessarily screened by AIT. I think people need to understand that TSA operates out of 450 + airports. Of these 450 + airports, 78 currently have AIT. There are a total of 486 machines in the field right now. (We’re working quickly to deploy more units to the field - above and beyond the 486). 
• Even at airports with AIT machines, they are not yet deployed at all checkpoint lanes.
• At times, machines could be shut down for routine maintenance, or maintenance issues. 
• If the technology just arrived at the airport, it's possible passengers would see a unit in the checkpoint but not in use. Several things have to happen before we can start using them, they have to be installed, tested and we have to fully train officers on how to use the technology.

After reading comments around the web from travelers, I learned that some saw the machines in action and some didn’t. That sounds about right to me. 

Blogger Bob

TSA Blog Team

Updated TSA Response to Claim That Nail Clippers Were Taken From Armed Soldiers in Indianapolis

On December 1, we responded to a story that had been and is still making its way onto a number of blogs and e-mail chains about the TSA screening of a military charter arriving at Indianapolis International Airport from Afghanistan. The unattributed story claims TSA confiscated multi-tools and nail clippers, while all on board were allowed to carry military issued firearms.

After responding, some folks, including the blog that posted the original story, stood by their claims. Well, since the facility is run by the National Guard, we went to them and received the following quote.

“TSA does not have personnel or conduct any screening in the facility where military charters are processed at Indianapolis International Airport.”

Shawn D. Gardner
Director of Public Affairs
Indiana National Guard

Please feel free to forward this to anybody who may have been misled by the original story.

Thanks,

Blogger Bob

TSA Blog Team

Response to Claims that TSA Opted out of Using AIT During Opt-Out Day

As soon as the media started reporting that Opt-Out day was a bust (see 40 + articles here), reports started coming in from blogs stating that TSA had intentionally shut down the Advanced Imaging Technology (AIT) machines. This claim is utterly and completely false as AIT operations were normal throughout the holiday travel period. We tried to think of some reasons that people might have come to this conclusion.

·     First off, everybody is not necessarily screened by AIT. I think people need to understand that TSA operates out of 450 + airports. Of these 450 + airports, 70 currently have AIT. There are a total of 430 machines in the field right now. (We’re working quickly to deploy more units to the field - above and beyond the 430).

·     Even at airports with AIT machines, they are not yet deployed at all checkpoint lanes.

·     At times, machines could be shut down for routine maintenance, or maintenance issues. 

·     If the technology just arrived at the airport, it's possible passengers would see a unit in the checkpoint but not in use. Several things have to happen before we can start using them, they have to be installed, tested and we have to fully train officers on how to use the technology.

Blogger Bob
TSA Blog Team